This second volume of the Library of America edition of Peter Taylor’s complete short fiction presents thirty stories written from 1960, when the author was forty-three, to 1992, when he was seventy-five. They include many of his most ambitious works, including “Dean of Men,” a monologue delivered by a middle-aged father to his long-haired son about the limits of idealism. “In the Miro District,” which concerns the contentious relationship of an ascetic grandfather and his libertine grandson, is a parable of the Old South’s enduring persistence in the New. “The Old Forest,” one of Taylor’s most celebrated works, is the story of a young man who jeopardizes his impending marriage by consorting with a girl deemed beneath his station, precipitating, in Taylor’s words, “a struggle of women for power among themselves.” Here too are all five of Taylor’s remarkable prose poems, stories in free verse that demonstrate that great fiction is, at its highest pitch, a line-by-line, image-by-image high-wire act. Two of the stories, “A Cheerful Disposition” and “The Megalopolitans,” are collected here for the first time.

Ann Beattie, editor, is the author of nine novels and eleven short story collections. She is a recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award, both given in acknowledgment of her lifetime contribution to the art of the story. She is the former Edgar Allan Poe Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia, where one of her colleagues was Peter Taylor.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

Reservations: A Love Story
Nerves
An Overwhelming Question
There
Demons
At the Drugstore
Two Pilgrims
The Throughway
At the Art Theater
The End of Play
A Cheerful Disposition
The Decline and Fall of the Episcopal Church in the Year of Our Lord 1952
Mrs. Billingsby’s Wine
The Elect
First Heat
In the Waiting Room
Dean of Men
Daphne’s Lover
The Real Ghost
The Instruction of a Mistress
The Hand of Emmagene
Three Heroines
The Megalopolitans
Her Need
The Captain’s Son
In the Miro District
The Old Forest
The Gift of the Prodigal
The Witch of Owl Mountain Springs: An Account of Her Remarkable Powers
The Oracle at Stoneleigh Court